Compassion Can’t Tolerate Harm
Why do you write about compassion? Aren’t you just protecting people who cause harm? If they’ve caused suffering, shouldn’t they suffer too?
I’ve heard those questions, and questions like them, often, but compassion and accountability aren’t in opposition. They’re both necessary.
Compassion at its core is not wanting others to be denied their humanity – demeaned, degraded, objectified, violated – not worthy of dignity, not worthy of what’s required in order to thrive. Public interest attorney and activist Bryan Stevenson writes that its absence, “can corrupt the decency of a community, a state, a nation. Fear and anger can make us vindictive and abusive, unjust and unfair, until we all suffer from the absence of mercy and we condemn ourselves as much as we victimize others.”
It’s easy to see myself in his words; it’s hard to hold vindictiveness at bay when I’m afraid of and enraged by an absolute lack of compassion in others, and the injustice and violence that lack allows. Punishment looks like the right response on those days.
But Stevenson argues that as he sees extremely punitive responses to harm become more common and accepted, he’s come to, “believe it’s necessary to recognize that we all need mercy, we all need justice, and – perhaps – we all need some measure of unmerited grace.”
Grace, in the secular sense, is holding open the possibility of change, of a future when I and others can do better. Accountability – restorative accountability, followed through to its end – realizes the promise of grace.
“True accountability,” writes transformative justice activist Mia Mingus, “should push us to grow and change, to transform.” Mingus continues, “It is generative, not punitive…Do not ask for accountability, when what you really want is punishment or revenge.”
In practice, restorative, transformative accountability is not about holding someone else accountable. It’s being accountable myself. It starts in everyday life: when my actions result in harm, I will seek to understand the harm my actions have caused, and I’ll apologize sincerely. Then, I’ll do what I need to do to not cause that harm again. That’s the essence of accountability – not punishment, change.
Mingus writes that being accountable requires vulnerability and courage. That it isn’t easy. Neither is compassion. Neither is grace.
But all three are necessary, I think, in a daily life framed by refusing their opposites: punitive violence, cruelty, tyranny, and inhumanity. Punishment without compassion and grace is essentially vengeance. Vengeance has rarely contributed to a system in which all can thrive.
To be clear: compassion doesn’t excuse harm. In fact, it’s just the opposite. If compassion means not wanting others to suffer dehumanization, then it can’t tolerate harm based on how people express their humanity.
From a place of compassion, then, I can insist that harmful behavior cease. I can call it out, advocate, resist - even coerce behavior change on the part of the powerful – as long as my own behavior doesn’t deny, demean, or degrade their humanity.
Still, my own behavior is the most accessible, powerful tool I have to change the systems where I spend my days – my work and family life, my communities. I can be accountable much more quickly and easily than I can hold others to account. So that’s where I begin.
Lucinda Garthwaite, Executive Director
References
Stevenson, Bryan. Just Mercy. Spiegel & Grau, 2014. https://eji.org/bryan-stevenson/
“The Four Parts of Accountability and How to Give a Genuine Apology.” Mia Mingus. Leaving Evidence blog.